REPURPOSE
In the Summer of 2016, my boyfriend invited me to go a music festival, Eaux Claires, in Wisconsin. The people going? My friends, Mitch and Liz; my boyfriend's former college roommate, Jacob; and my boyfriends current bandmate...and ex-girlfriend. Unsure of how I would handle the situation, but also selfishly looking forward to go have a weekend of fun with my friends, some of my favorite musicians, and the love of my life, I said yes and bought a ticket.
When I got back from the trip, which featured a nightmare drive from Michigan to Wisconsin, a nightmare drive home, and the best two days of my life slammed smack dab in the middle, my boyfriend leaned over to me and said, "Well, I think that went well." And with that I started bawling. The impact the trip had had on our relationship and my understanding of his current and past relationship with his bandmate (cough cough, ex) had been undeniable.
To cope, I started writing an essay detailing my fears of not knowing my boyfriend as well as his ex. I never finished the paper though as school started and a deep wrenching pain would wrap itself around me when I thought about my dilemma too much. But when given the opportunity to choose a paper to rewrite (or finish) for the Minor in Writing Gateway, this half-done mess was the only one that came to mind.
Over the course of the semester, I worked on creating a combination of a collection of personal narratives from my relationship and a deeper analysis of what knowing someone else actually is--and what portion of knowing is actually pure imagination.
The air was cool; any humidity was being swallowed up into the swirling smoke that was reaching toward the sky. I could hear the chatter of the crickets mingling with tired laughs and rustling tents. Curled in a sweat-damp flannel close to the fire, I was trying to let my lungs fill with fresh air after the nightmare 12-hour drive we had just completed. However, instead of focusing on my growling stomach, my attention was fixed steadily on the two musicians next to me.
The man that I was sitting up against was wrapped around his guitar, neck sloping downward like he was holding onto something precious. His normally bright eyes were closed as he strummed out a melody that seemed too gentle for his calloused fingers, but fit perfectly with the sensitive soul that wrapped around every fiber of his being. Trapped in his world, the only thing that seemed to tether him to the campfire scene happening around him were the gazes of the two women on either side of him.
She was sitting opposite me, further away so that she had to look through the haze of the smoky fire, which only made her full features more exotic in the low-light. But despite her distance she was connected to the man more than I could ever be as their voices weaved together above my head. The red light illuminated the soft lines of her round face and big, bright eyes, as she swayed gently to the words she had written.
As they reached the crescendo, his eyes snapped open. I felt myself getting giddy with anticipation of them meeting my own, but instead they reached across the fire to his singing partner.
I am here.
I felt my connection breaking and in a feeble attempt to strengthen it, my hand slide through the air and landed on the back of his neck, twisting into his hair softly. His head turned toward mine, and his features settled into contentedness as he snapped back to the present. And I felt at peace, felt whole once more—even though I could see the disappointment in the big, watery eyes staring at us from across the fire pit. The distance between us and her lengthening in my periphery.
You are everywhere.
People ask me all the time why I do it.
Why do you let your boyfriend, the person you love, spend so much time with his ex?
Why don’t you tell him how much it bothers you?
But the thing I can’t explain to them, no matter how hard I try, is that it bothers me more to tell him he can’t. I don’t want to be the girl who says which people her significant other can and can’t hang out with. That just isn’t my style—I’m simply not that controlling. This is probably stemming from my deep-seated fear of commitment, something that I have only recently gotten over. These feelings of fear still bubble up in every action though because I have somehow fully committed myself to this person and the feeling I get when times are good with him. So I guess it’d be fair to say that I’m afraid that if I express how insecure the imaginings about them make me, I risk him losing interest. However real that fear may actually be doesn’t matter. All that matters is that it’s there, dormant and waiting to bubble up on nights when he’s not with me.
Brennan is soft. Not soft in a Pillsbury Doughboy way, but soft in a you-just-want-to-fall-asleep-on-his-chest way. He has a constant feeling of coziness that surrounds him, and though his occasionally overgrown beard and penchant for beanies had seemed intimidating to me at first, his gentle smile and deep blue eyes are friendly. However, despite the comfortableness you could feel around him, there is a constant sense that he was never comfortable. Calloused fingers from years of guitar playing would drum incessantly on thighs and drag their way through his thick blonde hair. His eyes never focusing on more than one thing, darting to and fro as if waiting for something to catch their fancy. But this energy made capturing him even more electric—like you had won the biggest prize at the carnival only to have it stolen five minutes later.
Something about the challenge of him is what drew me in. There was a challenge of being with someone that didn’t want to be with anyone, who wanted to be able to wander, especially after being so focused on one person for so long. But that challenge quickly gave way to feelings of warmth. My hands smoothing his messed up hair and wrapping their way around his own tapping fingers. I am the peace-bringer and he is the sense of home. The connection worked, like two pieces that fit together not perfectly but in a way that seemed to make sense.
You know when something isn’t supposed to work as well is it does? Like frosties and French fries. A bizarre combination, but the saltiness and the sweetness always makes my taste buds sing. And some people get that and other people don’t. I feel like relationships are like that most of the time. Sure, you get the “really lucky people” who seem like everything is perfect all the time. They were made for each other—two pieces of the same cloth and all that jazz. Then there are the people that are really different. The couples that no one understands—the good girl and the bad boy or some cliché variation. And of course there are a myriad of relationships between the two extremes. But I think I’ve come to the conclusion that none of us really fit together that well—even those “really lucky people.” Even if you meet someone and it all clicks, there is still a certain amount of work that goes into it to make it actually work. Relationships are never an easy process. You have to wear down your rough edges so that the pieces of you fit together better.
Despite her distance she was connected to the man more than I could ever be...
Sometimes I think the whole idea is weird though. Like you have to change you in some ways. That process can often be the end of most relationships. Maybe you didn’t fit together that well anyways so this ongoing process is too tedious. Or maybe you like the way you are right now and don’t want to face that inevitable change at all. Or maybe it’s just too much work and you are tired of wearing each other down all the time. I think that last reason is the reason most people end relationships. It just gets to be too much work to always make two things fit perfectly together.
I worry sometimes that I’m wearing myself down for Brennan either too quickly or too slowly. We aren’t a perfect fit, as I’m positive no one is. But I like the idea of what I could be when we are together. Friends comment things like, “It works, but it doesn’t make sense,” about us. Brennan and I have both said the same thing—for people so seemingly different, it’s weird that we would have found enough similarities to even try to make the process work. But the thing is, I like who I am with him. I always have. That version of me is more polished, my edges not as jagged. I worry though, that without some of the jagged pieces, we will get bored with the process. There will be nothing left to do except face each other in our supposed knowledge of the other and say, “What now?” And that terrifies me. It has always terrified me. But with him, it’s somehow magnified because I imagine us fitting together so well—like some beautiful 2500-piece puzzle of an Italian countryside—but the image is too perfect, too bright and cheery. And I know that’s not what life is really like. It’s supposed to be jagged and messy. That’s all I’ve ever known and while we all dream of perfection, I think in its reality, we wouldn’t be able to function. It’s not in our nature. We are supposed to find problems and fix them or have them backfire in our face.
Maybe this idea comes from how I grew up—my parents were best friends, but even best friends fight. Often though, as I got older I realized that those fights weren’t always productive. They didn’t go anywhere or achieve anything. That doesn’t mean that those arguments, big or small, were insignificant; it just meant that in the end, the lack of resolve said more about the budding lack of resolve in their relationship in general. But that instilled in me a desire to always talk things through. I never have shied away from issues—often pushing them to the extreme. But with Brennan, I feel that sometimes it’s easy to get caught in the routine of happiness. Wake up, smile lazily, cook breakfast, etc. etc. When an argument does happen though, it’s different—more fluid. Because at the end of it, we could be panting and angry—blood pounding through my temples—but it never feels bad or inconsequential. It feels like we’ve achieved…something. Like I just ran a marathon, but somewhere beautiful and scenic rather than one trapped on a treadmill going nowhere. It seems weird but that’s how I always imagine us moving—not in circles around issues like my parents but forward. Always forward.
In some ways though, I’m scared, I think, that the image of us I have in my mind won’t remain true. That we’ll both get tired and end things. That we won’t run the race or that we’ll stop moving forward—doomed to an indoor track. But I’m also scared on some level, that what I’ve imagined is completely right—that after we are done it will all be…perfect. It will all be boring in its rightness. The scenery, however beautiful, will become dull. So for me, it’s either loss of effort or loss of interest. No matter how hard I try then, I guess I keep looking for things to make us more jagged. I don’t want the image to be boring but I don’t want to be scared out of trying.
Even if you meet someone and it all clicks, there is still a certain amount of work that goes into it to make it actually work.
In the interim, my mind has latched onto this dangerous subterfuge of his past and present relationship with her. I can’t shake the thoughts though because they cling to everything. Constant reminders are found in missed calls and text messages of reasons why I should worry. My mind is always moving—always racing. Though this race is never forward. The peace I thought I had is tenuous now. But I can’t say definitely that I mind.
Their relationship has fascinated me since the first night we met.
We had been “set-up” for my sorority’s date party by our two friends who were together. We’d met a couple times before in large groups of people but never actually exchanged words to each other directly. I was so nervous for the upcoming night that I had gotten to our friend’s pregame 15 minutes early so I could drink my three-buck chuck. It only took 5 to chug the whole bottle.
“Soooo…” I stuttered, looking for words harder than I have to look for a clean pair of socks in the winter time, “You play music?”
Immediately I wanted to hit myself. Of course he plays music you idiot, he’s in the fucking MUSIC school.
“Uh yeah I’m in a band; it’s cool,” Brennan replied, his hurried sentence cutting through the chatter and music of our mutual friends in the background.
I clenched my doughy palms together. Bands are cool.
It seems weird but that's how I always imagine us moving—not in circles around issues like my parents but forward. Always forward.
“What kind of music?”
Excitedly, Brennan pulled out his phone. “Well we actually just got put on Spotify, so I can show you that and our Facebook page. I’m working on our next EP for a class project.”
He continued to chatter as I sat back a little, partly because I realized that I had gotten him on a subject that didn’t require me to keep asking stupid questions and partly because I was concerned that the black plastic milk carton I was sitting was denting my ass cheeks.
Leaning forward as I readjusted my bottom, my eyes fixed on the image that served as the album art for their EP. Two people sitting on a dock, shoulder to shoulder. The colors were hyper-concentrated—like a fever dream or a documentary about the Grateful Dead.
“Who’s that?”
And with that simple question, Brennan fell back into a nervous silence. “Oh um. That’s me.”
“Well duh,” I laughed, not catching the mood switch. “But who’s that next to you—with the red hair?”
“Just my bandmate. Lena.”
He wasn’t looking me in the eyes. And I registered that my friends had stopped talking as loudly in the background, putting their conversations on pause to listen to our discussion.
My mind has latched onto this dangerous subterfuge of his past and present relationship with her.
“Oh? How’d you two meet?” I asked, still not picking up on the awkwardness as I was more distracted by my pounding heart. His face was closer to mine that a man’s had been in a long time and instead of excitement, I felt knots in my stomach. Who the fuck is Lena?
“We are both in PAT—um my major program,” he said, “but we-used-to-date…”
The last part of the sentence was said in a hurry but I caught it anyways. We used to date.
I had so many questions. How long did they date? When did they break up? Why did they break up? They were in a band together—how does that work? But instead of letting the flood of overly personal questions break the dam of his obvious nervousness, I smiled and sipped on my drink.
“Oh, cool. I’ll have to check you guys out on Spotify when I get home tonight.”
I have never been a serial dater—most likely due to the fact that none of the boys I knew growing up would touch me with a ten-foot pole. No, I wasn’t ugly, just tall and kind of obnoxious in an always-talking-about-nothing way. To be fair, that hasn’t really changed much. Puberty had made it so most (“most” being the operative word) boys had caught up to my overbearing height and my increasingly suave social skills hide the obnoxious for at least a couple of months. Boys only recently have begun to flock to me. Generally, they are under the influence of something, but I’m still going to count this as a victory.
My boyfriend, Brennan, was the opposite. Unlike me, he had had three long-term girlfriends in the past 7 or so years. This last girl had been one of the longest. A whopping 2 years.
She knew him—at least in a way, I’m sure. From what I’ve gathered, they practically lived together. They studied the same thing in college, were the same age, had the same tastes in music. All things that linked them more inextricably than being simultaneously obnoxious. Their passions were seemingly so synced that they were still in a band together.
I often assume that she knows him. She knows the closest version of him that I know at least. Because they broke up two months before we met.
Two years.
Two months.
Then me.
That kind of knowing.
I remember I read a post one time about how you shouldn’t be Facebook friends with your ex. That there is something inherently dangerous to your mental health and emotional happiness when you are constantly assaulted with the comparisons of your well-adjustedness post-relationship versus their well-adjustedness post-relationship. That trying to be friends, either entirely or just on social media, would oftentimes lead to more pain than gain.
Instead of letting the flood of overly personal questions break the dam of his obvious nervousness, I smiled and sipped on my drink.
This article came at a point in my life when I was considering allowing my ex back into my social circle. Not as a friend—or even a friendly acquaintance. Just as someone who was there. There because at one point he had been the person who had known me better than anyone else on this planet (except my mom because let’s be honest, does anyone know you better than your mom?). Just letting him in because it was the right thing to do. For him. At least that’s what I thought. But after reading the article, I started wondering if we could even have each other in our lives at all.
So I asked him to coffee a couple weeks later to find out. As soon as he sat down, I realized what I had known since he had dumped me unceremoniously the day before I had two finals: he didn’t know me as well as I thought. He didn’t know me well enough to deserve me, because if he had, we would still be together and the coffee we were sharing wouldn’t be awkward and I wouldn’t have been finding out for the first time that his parents had filed for divorce and he had gotten a job at Purdue. Because I would already have known those things.
He wasn’t the person I had known a year ago. And I wasn’t the person he had known either. And after that coffee date, I found the article again. My finger hovered over share via personal message. My thoughts were moving a mile a minute. Maybe if Brennan saw this, he would realize how weird his—our—scenario was.
A boyfriend and a girlfriend and an ex all hanging out in a room together. Or a girlfriend finding out that her boyfriend couldn’t hang out that day because he would be spending the entirety of it at his ex’s apartment—the apartment he practically used to live in—making music because they weren’t just friends on Facebook, they were in a band together.
Maybe he would realize that she wasn’t the person he had known and she wasn’t the person he had known. An “aha” moment of clarity that would cause a spring-cleaning of old, worn out relationship.
But I clicked out of the message before I sent it. I exited my hopes of getting him all to myself. In my head, I justified this as an act of knowledge—he knew her and she knew him. They were nothing like my ex and I, who had grown apart from each other after our unceremonious split. They had to know each other as well, and that’s why they were still friends. That’s why they are still in each other’s lives.
But that’s the problem with knowledge like this—it isn’t absolute, no matter how much I think it is. My reaction was based on my emotions—my feelings of inadequacy when faced with a friend and former lover. This was my justification for their ongoing relationship—she must know him better. But in reality, that’s only a response to something deeper within myself—an external reason for an internal reaction.
But that's the problem with knowlege like this—it isn't absolute, no matter how much I think it is.
Is it my deep-seated insecurities? Possibly. More likely, it’s this coupled with my often overactive imagination which morphs possibilities into absolutes. This has been the downfall of many of my relationships—romantic or otherwise. In the moment though, I couldn’t recognize this excuse for my stagnation. I could only feel the sense of seemingly heartbreaking clarity that came to me as I was washing my hands in an Espresso Royale bathroom after the most awkward coffee date of my life, realizing that I would never just have to share knowing Brennan with his mom. There would always be another who could claim that knowledge to themselves as well. And though just a reaction to an emotion that I’m still not sure how to exactly name, that moment still cuts just as hard as it did under those harsh fluorescent lights.
I feel like I realize now that knowledge is a precarious thing. Truly and deeply knowing someone is rare, if not impossible. Sometimes I feel like it’s even impossible to know ourselves that well. It’s seen in those moments of us wondering why we did that or why we said that. Why did we react that way? If we really knew ourselves though, wouldn’t we already know why?
So what is it that makes us think that other people know us? Why do I hold out hope that Brennan truly understands me, even though I know it isn’t fully true? For me, it’s more comforting to imagine that that’s the case. More comforting to live in a reality where everything and everyone is completely knowable—you just have to expend the effort to do so. The knowledge that I have then isn’t really knowledge at all. It’s an idea, an imprint—the outline of something that I hope to be true. Isn’t that how all of us move through the world though? Just hoping that what we think we know is real. Because if it isn’t then what is?
“So who’s going to be there tonight?” I asked, running my hands through my hair and standing up from the bed.
“Oh you know—me, Mitch, Kevin—the usual crew,” he replied grabbing his keys and wallet off of the chair that served as a makeshift bed side table.
“That it?”
“I think a couple other people will be there too. Maybe Jacob,” I shook my head at his response.
“You should really know if your own roommate is coming.”
“Yeah well,” he shrugged his shoulders softly, “Lena’s coming too.”
I felt my previously dry palms start to moisten. “Oh?”
“Yeah, and then I’m sure some of the people playing the show tonight will come over tonight afterwards.”
I blinked at him as he continued to hum the Bon Iver song we’d been listening to under his breathe. “Should be fun,” I managed to squeak out of my mouth, sounding only slightly convincing.
Brennan turned back to me, his easy smile widening on his face. “I can’t wait for you to hang out with everyone.”
And just like that, the fact that I would be hanging out with the ex-girlfriend of the boy that I was too quickly falling in love with didn’t seem like that big of a deal.
I feel like I realize now that knowledge is a precarious thing. Truly and deeply knowing someone is rare, if not impossible.
The trip home from the festival was as horrible as the trip there. The car top carrier holding all of our stuff flew open on the highway. I quite literally caused a traffic jam walking a mile down the side of the road in short shorts and a crop top while carrying all our salvageable belongings. Shortly thereafter we got a flat tire.
What a great day.
So as we stopped in our friend’s hometown to drop off some of the camping gear he had borrowed from his dad, I was finally allowing myself to unwind all the tension from the trip. Ten painfully atrocious hours in a car with your handsy friends and your boyfriend who does not handle any type of stress well had worn me to the point of exhaustion.
As we were leaving town, the mood started to tangibly lighten. We decided to drive by the beach to watch the sunset on Lake Michigan before finishing the last two hours of the trip. As we saw the dull tendrils of the sun disappearing and watched as tourists and locals walked along the beach, ice cream cones in hand, I felt the events of the journey slip away and was left with the residual goodness of the two days at the music festival in Wisconsin—the best two days of my life.
Slipping my hand into Brennan’s, we started to drive away and the calmness was left on the beach. We started joking about something, and for the first time the conversation was without any of the bitterness we had accumulated on the road. His hand tightened around mine as he turned toward me, and with love in his eyes said, “Hey Lena—Abby—I-I mean Abby.”
Bang.
A gunshot wound to my chest. My hand fell limp as he recoiled from me in shock at his mistake. Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw my friend Liz’s eyes widen in secondhand embarrassment.
“Dang dude…that was, uh, yeah…” Mitchell, the long-haired, normally fast-talking driver said trying to dispel the awkward silence.
I wanted to cry but I couldn’t. I couldn’t muster up the strength to respond to being confused for a different person—a different girl. A different girlfriend. The ache in the center of my sternum was spreading across my body, but as it spread it morphed into a numbness.
I couldn't muster up the strength to respond to being confused for a different person—a different girl. A different girlfriend.
After the best weekend of my life, the hardest weekend too, I had to watch my own boyfriend—and love of my life—stumble over my own name. It isn’t like I have not called him the wrong name before. Awkwardly, during a petty argument I had called him, “Zach” which is my older brother’s name. That was uncomfortable, but not unimaginable to me—a serial wrong-name-caller. I was always the kid growing up that would call my teacher “Mom” much to the amusement of my classmates. But as I think about what I imagine to be possible for me, even a mistake of that magnitude seems unreasonable. I never feel like I would ever accidentally call him the name of an ex, especially in a moment of happiness or love or passion. That’s because for me, I don’t attribute those names with happy memories. When I’m doing the happy or mundane, their names are not the ones that tumble willingly from my lips. I guess that’s what hurt the most. Not that he had called me the wrong name, but that he had done it with love in his eyes. If it had been under different circumstances—a fight or after a stressful day—I might be able to tolerate (though still deeply dislike it). But in a bubble of bliss, the name he turned to was not my own.
In my imaginings, that signals that subconsciously, he must not attach that much negative to her name. That there is still some habit to whisper her name in those beautiful moments of life. And that crushes me. Selfishly, I think in part, because I want all his happy moments to be firmly attached to my face—my name. But I know that that is simply not possible. He spent two years with her and for two years, in happy times and in bad, he said her name.
I know I’ll have to get over the jealousness I have over that fact, but so far, that resolution has not yet come for me. Whether that be because I can’t get there yet or I can’t let myself get there yet, I’m not sure. Sometimes, I think I lean toward the latter though. In some ways, I think that’s because I’m afraid if I let it go, I’ll be acknowledging the similarities that her and I share. Not just us falling in love with the same man, the same laugh, the same weird puppy dog eyes he does when he wants you to run your hands through his hair. But also the same feelings we have toward each other. I see it in her tentative smiles and her Abby can come if she wants, I guess. The same way I catch her looking at us sadly as we sit curled on the couch at our friend’s house talking about our day. Because I see the same thing that I imagine her seeing when I watch her bend her head toward his as they talk about music or play a new riff on the guitar. Or when he excitedly shows her a funny post on Facebook right after he finishes shoving the screen in my face. We are similar. It is only right he sometimes confuses the two women (besides his mom and sister) that he is closest to. But just because it’s only right doesn’t make it hurt less or make it more okay.
And that’s why, in that moment, there was nothing I could do to dispel the tightening around my lungs or wipe away the manic desperation to apologize from Brennan’s eyes. There wasn’t anything I could do because in that moment of pure comfort and happiness, the name that had tumbled from his lips did not belong to the one that had been kissing him the night before. And it hurt.
I'm afraid if I let it go, I'll be acknowledging the similarities that her and I share.
My mother is sure that this weird triangle of current and past lovers will be the downfall of my relationship with Brennan. While my mother is sure of many things, this is one she especially isn’t afraid to voice. When she first started reprimanding me, I felt anger. This is the man that I hope to spend the rest of my life with, I would think. I’m not going to let something as silly as this be the demise of something I cherish so much. But it also has pushed me to think about the relationships between the three of us in ways that I never had been strong enough to do before. It’s odd for me to admit that because I pride myself on my strength to do anything. That’s how I was raised. Stoic, my grandmother called it. Looking back, that’s how I’ve been in every relationship too. I was always the one who was chased—the one who was wanted. I had all the power and in the end, that often spelled out the demise of all those past relationships. I couldn’t feel too much—or allow myself to at least. And then I met Brennan. He made me not stoic. For every part he chased, I would chase right back. It became a mutual attraction in every sense of the word. But when the thoughts—the imaginings—of her and him together began to creep into my mind, especially when I am forced to face her with a smile on my face as she continues a relationship with Brennan that I will never be able to truly understand or be a part of, that equality started to fade.
For the first time, I feel like I was on unequal footing. Part of this is very much my fault. I refused from the very beginning to ever put my foot down and make him choose. I don’t regret this decision because it’s not in my nature to issue unfair ultimatums, but it is one that I grow weary of defending to friends and loved ones. But part of it does still feel very much out of my control. I know with a feeling I’ve never had before that I could never leave Brennan. He tells me he feels the same way and while I believe him and trust him, it does sometimes feel like she’s this omnipresent force in our relationship. That the two of them together can decide our future and I won’t ever have a say. And while I know that this is very much not truth, it is what I imagine to be true. So here I sit—vulnerable. A feeling I don’t really ever feel in relationships. And I know that I could dig myself out and that I should.
I know that this isn’t a permanent position and that as we grow together and they grow apart, things will continue to morph back to equilibrium. But for whatever reason, I can’t force myself to begin that trek right now. I don’t want to. I’d rather be the vulnerable one, I think, so that if anything does happen, I can claim the resulting heartbreak as my own.
I'd rather be the vulnerable one, I think, so that if anything does happen, I can claim the resulting heartbreak as my own.
Brennan’s mom makes scrapbooks for each calendar year. She’s the cool mom that drinks beer and has a crafting room. And scrapbooks. When he told me this on our 9-hour drive to his parents’ house in Delaware, I couldn’t help but get way too excited.
“You mean I get to see what baby B looks like?”
I think he recognized the mischief concealed in my question. “Uh, I mean maybe. I don’t even know where they are so we might not even get to see them.”
With a wicked grin, I laughed, “Oh I’m sure your mom will. We can just ask her.”
As we flipped through the scrapbook’s with Brennan’s mom and sister, laughing at the horrible 90s haircuts and the funny Halloween costumes, I found myself wondering about what the most recent family scrapbooks looked like. There were none in the closet passed 2007, and even though the part of me that wanted to believe that it was probably nothing, I still felt unease.
They had just moved—they were still packed away. But I couldn’t help but think that even though they were tucked away, there was one face littered lovingly throughout.
A girl with full features and emotional eyes. A girl that wrote songs that Brennan swore weren’t about anything, even though I could tell differently. Tucked away in those scrapbooks was a girl I imagined was still, at some level, heartbroken or jealous or angry every time I pulled him away from her. I couldn’t know for certain, but in the darkest moments I would imagine her thinking about Brennan. And it would hurt my heart in ways that caused aches to spread throughout my whole body.
Those morbid daydreams would cause my breath to catch painfully in my throat. But I’m not sure she imagines me doing this—that she knows about my deepest nightmares and fears—and what she might never imagine is that when I think about the fact those scrapbooks even exist with her and not me, I am paralyzed.
Paralyzed in fear that she will change his mind.
Or he will.